


Venom.

by Bakuras



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School
Genre: Character Study, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 06:29:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13265661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakuras/pseuds/Bakuras
Summary: There's a word for what you are.(A short-ish character study of Juzo Sakakura.)





	Venom.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HumanDisqualification](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumanDisqualification/gifts).



> This fic was a commission from my lovely friend and rp partner!!! :') I had a lot of fun writing it honestly!!
> 
> Just a warning, this really does deal with feelings of internalized homophobia. They're pulled from my own experiences and get quite a bit personal. If that's a trigger or uncomfortable subject for you, this might be a fic to skip!!
> 
> And another note, just to avoid any confusion: this takes place in an au where the dr3 mutual killing never happened, and Sakakura instead cut his arm off after being trapped in a building collapse. It comes up momentarily here!

There’s a word for what you are.  You won’t say it.

 

One word.  An incantation far more potent and malicious than the entire contents of any leather bound book - pages upon pages of ancient texts you can’t pronounce, what you _shouldn’t_ pronounce outside of a circle drawn in salt and chalk.  An incantation you’ve heard a thousand and one times before - each time laced in a new venom, like thick, viscous drops collected from a thousand and one species of serpent.

 

Your father is a king cobra.  The boys at school, asps.

 

And you.  Sakakura Juzo.  A black mamba, curled and quiet.  The most aggressive and fast-acting neurotoxin found in nature, seeping from a mouth of tar.  

 

...If _you_ speak it, it’s real.  

 

So it’s swallowed.  And swallowed.  And swallowed.  

 

But venom like that cannot be swallowed once.  Your body rejects it, even as you beg it to linger inside.  

 

 _It will kill you._ Your body says.  

 

 _With any luck._  

 

You swallow again.  

  


The first time it happens, it’s on a tour of the campus.  

 

The man you’re with walks through the locker room as though he’s in a classroom building.  Every undressed man is of no more concern to him than a poster in a hallway, a piece of paper left in dust on the floor.  His voice doesn’t shake.  He doesn’t lower his eyes.  He doesn’t pull at the skin on his hands, he doesn’t bite at the inside of his cheeks until he tastes his own blood, no part of this makes him feel as though he’s _violating_ these men just by being present in their space -

 

...Everything is so inconsequential, so _innocent_ to people who _aren’t like you._

 

You swallow the venom.  It lodges in your throat.  

 

You swear on everything you would ever come to care about that you will never endure that again.  

 

For awhile, you avoid the locker room entirely.  Insisting on showering in your own room isn’t the most time-efficient option by far, but it’s rarely needed, anyway.  You can avoid breaking a sweat if you need to, and no one would notice - even at a quarter, an _eighth_ of your full power - you’re still leagues above everyone who comes to challenge you.

 

It works, until it doesn’t.  

 

It works, until you need to drown something again.  

  


He has kind eyes.  They sparkle when he smiles.  

 

He can hold the attention of an entire room and then some - on more than one occasion, you’ve noticed people pausing from _outside the window_ when he addresses the Student Council, sometimes on matters that are entirely meaningless to anybody not directly involved.  Even so, you can see a shyness that comes when he talks to you by himself, as though talking one on one isn’t something he’s particularly used to.  

 

He asks for your help with coursework frequently, which is an odd change of pace for you.  It’s not that you _aren’t_ intelligent, but your reputation doesn’t exactly come from your grades on mathematics exams.  Most of the time you’re completely overlooked in the area of academia, even in the instances when your scores are the highest in the class.  

 

Munakata Kyosuke is the first person since before you can remember to ask for your thoughts on something that you aren’t famous for.  

 

His kind eyes start to light up when he sees you.  

 

 

_Bury it.  Bury it. Bury it.  Bury it._

 

You have class.  You don’t have time to make it to your room.  You don’t have time for this.  

 

_Don’t think of him.  Don’t think of him. Don’t think don’t think don’t thinkdon’tthinkdon’t thinkdon’tthinkdon’tthinkdon’tthinkdon’t -_

 

There’s a sound like a thundercrack where you can barely hear it.  A storm, somewhere - something horribly _biblical_ in nature, a black cloud that you can’t see -

  
_SMOTHER IT._

 

The thunder seems to be affecting you in some distant way - you feel the muscle in your arms ache with every roll, timed almost _exactly_.  

 

_BURY IT._

 

The ache travels from your arms down to your hands - this pain isn’t new - what you’re _doing_ isn’t new -

 

 **_CRACK_ ** _._

 

The bag flies from the hook it’s suspended on.  

 

Your hands are dripping blood.

  


It works until you aren’t practicing anymore.  

 

You can run to your room.  Shower quickly.  Not here.  

 

You can’t avoid breaking a sweat, either.  Your title as the Super High School Level Boxer doesn’t change the fact that you’re the youngest to ever _compete_ in the World Championships, let alone have any real shot at the belt.  Good as you are, fast as you are, _smart_ as you are - the odds are stacked against you nonetheless.  The rolling thunder has to follow you here.  

 

With it comes sickness.  Violation.  Voyeurism that the men you now have to clean yourself up with have never consented to.  

You can’t focus.  You lose your first practice match.  

 

At the end of the day, your competitors dwindle out one by one.  You keep hitting.  And hitting.  And hitting.  You beg your body to hurt as much as it deserves.  It never will.  As sore as you are, as much skin as you take from your knuckles, it never, _ever_ will.  

 

Munakata texts you to ask if you’re alright. By the time you bring your exhausted body into the locker room, he’s already gone to bed.  

 

Yukizome lectures you the next day.  

  


The poison that coats the inside of your veins stays with you, sickens you, long past the end of your career.  Past even the love you share with Munakata - a love you build _together_ , outside the eye of the broken world, wrapping both of you in protective silk that keeps out the blood and ash coating everything else.  It manifests differently by then - in guilt over your own arousal, in a continued reflex to look away as he gets undressed.  He sees it, though.  He sits with you, soothes you.  But it doesn’t seem to subside.  

 

It takes an accident that nearly leaves him in this world alone for you to understand.

 

Antivenom doesn’t come from nothing, and cannot exist without the thing it protects you from.  Your poison, that word, that _thing_ that you are - your body adapts around it, builds its own immunity that would finally come to culminate in this dark, airless place.  

 

The realization that **_it_ ** \- the fact that you are deeply, profoundly, _impossibly_ in love with another man, and your _ability_ to be deeply, profoundly, _impossibly_ in love with him - is what will ultimately save Munakata Kyosuke from being smothered by the dark - is the centrifuge that will separate your blood from its own malice.  

 

You want to live.  You want to live.  

 

Right now, under a thousand tons of rubble stacked on top of this unstable, shifting crevice without any air, you realize that you want to live more than you have ever wanted to die.  

 

You realize that, more than anything you have ever wanted in this world - more intensely than your heart begged itself to stop loving him, more desperately than you ached for him to love you, too - you want to live.  You want to live as a gay man.  

 

You defang the black mamba when the last tendon snaps.  

  


The arm takes some getting used to.  It’s heavier than the one you thankfully left intact.  You have confidence that it’ll hit just as hard, but your balance and speed need fine tuning, for now.  

 

The gym’s quiet, aside from the blows you’re doing to your practice targets, (hanging bags are no more stable to you than a flimsy piece of paper, by now.) and it’s only when your phone buzzes in your pocket that you realize just how quiet, and how _late_ , it is.  

 

“...Sakakura.  Aren’t you normally the one reminding me to eat?"

 

“...Heh.  Sorry, angel.  I’ll leave now.”

 

“Don’t be. <3”  

 

You laugh to yourself, sliding your phone carefully into your pocket before you pick up your bags.  It takes you a minute to get the smile off your face and walk out with your usual scowl, which is  _ unusually _ ingenuine, this time.  

 

...You shower together, that night.  

 

You don’t look away.  


End file.
